Thanks for responding Speedy. Those ROMS are to hold a small machine language routine for running the card WITHOUT the disk, according to the manual. So you are half correct. :-)

But there is no reference as to where or how to get the ROMS in the manual. They only specify that they are 256 by 8 bytes. (not very big!) Likely an MMI 6300 series fuse link PROM. There is also reference to putting RAM in those sockets as well, but for unknown reasons not described in the manual. (The manual is somewhat vague regarding ROM or RAM useage) But the software is most important for running the card, and they address it as being Integer and AppleSoft compatible. Reverse engineering the card will be a significant hassle, as the designer/builder made this card to perform scientific calculations by setting an interrupt at a specified location and jumping to a routine (located on that CCSoft Disk) that executes the calculation(s) and returns the value & status back to the Apple II for display or whatever. I don't think I would be able to make this card work without that disk. At least, not very well.

So I hope that you are able to adopt this to get the Apple card running. Maybe you could upload an image of the backside of your card, so we might be able to re-engineer ? If you could share a BOM that would be great as well.

:Update: maybe you can take off all ICs and take a new picture of the Top layer, too? This might help to see the pcb tracks and to reengineer the card to create a schematic.

so command 6C, as used above at the shared code, is mentioned at page 1-7, so I do believe that you should be able to address the card via BASIC as we did with our ZX Spectrum computers. To understand how this works, please use the shared PDFs.

And I do found a company using the same name as referenced in the manual, so maybe it's worth to contact them.

Update: the folowing link is wrong... this company stays in Saudia Arab and not in California, so it has nothing to do with the Apple II products company

as I thought myself... CCS did something similar as some folks of our Sinclair community did... patching the ZX Spectrum / ZX81 ROM. CCS "patched" Applesoft to use the APU instead of the 65(C)02 when using some specific mathematical instructions which are supported by the APU.

"Apple APU. The Model 7811 B Arithmetic Processor Unit is intended to increase the execution speed of Applesoft II programs and the number of math functions available. The system employs an AMD9511 APU and plugs into one of the Apple expansion slots. The CCSoft interpreter is loaded from the diskette provided, and the system is ready to, go. The CCSoft interpreter is identical to Applesoft, except that CCSoft sends arithmetic functions to the APU for fast execution. Additional functions include AsiN(x), ACOS(X), LOGIO(X), SINIH(x), COSH(x), TANH(X), INVERSE(x) and PI. "

Address:California Computer Systems,

250 Caribbean Dr.,

Sunnyvale, CA 94086

(Tel: 408-734-5811)

So you need someone (or yourself) who's able to implement such patches into Applesoft.

that's great... many thanks for that. In between I found the schematic of the board which is attached to the Documentation. So yesterday I started to redraw the schematic using KiCAD. Your pictures are more than welcome as this will help to place the traces as done by CSS. It will take some time to have this finished. There's also one IC which is an Octal Transmitter/Receiver and which seems to be very rare... so maybe another one needs to be used here. All other components should be available... while for the Transistors a BC556 should be used instead of the one used by CCS.

I also found additional information about the company... if these are right they seemed to start with S100 Bus System components. Will share the link when I'm at my desktop computer.

Tokabln, looking at the schematic and comparing it to the actual board, you're going to see many differences, so you might want to re-draw the schematic from the board. (just saying...) I found a lot of differences when I drew the schematic from a WildCard board. Other boards as well. I will eventually re-draw this one but I want to finish up a previous project first.

It would be really nice if someone had that CCSoft disk they would share... (calling out all AF members... ) :-)

well I'm actually not sure if I'm willing to setup a batch of boards. First task was, to preserve what was done in the past by CCS.

Next step might be to change the DP... to a more modern Transceiver/Receiver stuff. I'm also not sure yet how to address this card, as only Addressline A0 is used here to toggle between the Command-/Dataregister. But that's it, so it's very different to what we did with the ZX Spectrum. Here we used a fixed address to load/unload the mathematical stuff, toggling between Data- and Command Register as shown above within the shared Basic code.

So I believe we need to understand the philosophie behind what was done for the Apple, which I haven't done yet... because I'm not very familiar with the Apple Bus.

@macnoyd... yes you are right, INT / RAM should be using a small Jumper instead of a wired brigde. I will change this and will made the GERBER files available. It doesn't make any sense to produce boards and to ship them to worldwide afterwards as the costs are to high than. So if someone like to (re-)build the original card, he can do that and maybe have some spare for folks within his country.

If someone is interested please send me a PM with your eMail Adress and I will share the file, because I can't upload athe ZIP here.

Those who are interested in, please double check the included board pictures with the original pcb pictures shared by macnoyd, just to prevent mistakes. Even that macnoyd has done a precheck, it's not my fault if you are getting wrong pcbs.

@macnoyd: I will send it to you in a few minutes using your shared eMail address.

I'm also not sure yet how to address this card, as only Addressline A0 is used here to toggle between the Command-/Dataregister. But that's it, so it's very different to what we did with the ZX Spectrum.

The /DEVSEL line addresses the FPU. /IOSEL addresses the SRAMs. Means in slot 1 the addresses of the FPU are $C09n.

SRAM: there are two SRAMs 256*4 in two 16pin sockets. I can only find one chip that fits: Intel 2112. Very rare?

thanks for the explanation... so that make sense... because CCS talks about using additional RAM or additional ROM within the manual. So maybe I can change the RAM part from 2 x 2112 to another 256 Byte RAM type. Let's see.

Also thanks for the card address... I found it in the doc right now... but just one question left... how would this address ($C09n) change when A0 is toggled...

are we then talking about $C090 when A0 is low

and $C091 when A0 is high?

The reason why I'm asking is, that A0 is toggling between the Data-/Command Register of the FPU. In such case recreating the above ZX Spectrum code shouldn't be a problem, so macnoyd could start some testing when he's resoldering the card ;-)

As a DP8304B Octal Bus driver replacement a 74LS244 (not pin compatible) seems to be okay to do that job.

Thanks again and maybe we can discuss offline (in German) how to enhance the card. I will send you my eMail Address via PM.

After reading (and understanding?) the manual I think having this RAM is not necessary. It's a nice feature to have 256 bytes of RAM (or ROM) for 6502 code, but now in 2019 it's expensive to get these obsolete chips. Means: no need to populate Q1, R4, R5 and the jumper for RAM.

As long we do not have any content to program the PROMs, there isn't any demand to find a programmer ;-)

Btw: just sent an email to a guy while hoping he's able to help us here... you are on bcc:

Yes, got it. Thanks for keeping me in copy. I hope he responds and has something for us. That would be great if he does.

Regarding the ROM / RAM sockets, I think it would be relatively easy to change this to a single 2K x 8 socket instead of the (2) 256 byte by 4 configuration that currently exists. At the time, the 2112 and 6301 were good choices, though today, maybe not so much. Fortunately, there's a 2K x 8 RAM & EPRom that closely matches, pin for pin. For me though, there's something nostalgic in keeping the design like it is. Not all would share this opion, but that's OK.

I can draw up a schematic using 2716 EPROM or 6116 SRAM layout if it's a consideration, but I'd like to do it only after we obtain the CCSoft disk. Without that disk, we would need to re-engineer the software, and I'm not in a good place to do that right now. Too many other projects in the works. The CCSoft disk is what makes this board desirable, in my honest opinion. I'm hopeful that this disk exists somewhere and is discovered.

The first Gerbers are for the nostalgic folks... while I'm actually in contact with RalfK. He has some good ideas and some requests that such a "new" card should offer. Nevertheless I believe that I will produce up to 5 cards (maybe 10) for the German community based on the old design. For my personal card I just ordered some RAM, to have a more historical version ;-)

So when I'm done with the CCS original schematic (while I will take care to use the card as reference), I probably will start to do a redesign (probably with Ralf) and will share and discuss with you folks if something else is needed or requested.

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